Many comestible products contain flavor oils and/or flavor components to provide the product with the desired taste and aroma, and to enhance the products' overall flavor perception in the mouth. Most flavors used in commercial applications are a complex mixture of compounds which have a particular taste and/or aroma associated with them. This generally holds true with respect to both natural and synthetic flavors and flavor components.
The volatility of flavor oils varies greatly, depending on the vapor pressures of the flavor components. Some of the more popular flavors, such as spearmint, peppermint, lemon, lime and cinnamon as well as numerous flavor components or compounds, such as menthol, benzaldehyde and camphor, are comprised of components which are extremely volatile, making them difficult to handle in manufacturing operations, as well as difficult to stabilize once they are incorporated into a product. For example, in the manufacture of chewing gum compositions and hard candies, volatile oils are generally one of the last ingredients to be added. This is because these confectionery compositions require mixing of the ingredients at temperatures which will quickly drive off the volatile components in the flavor oils. In cases where the flavor oils are particularly volatile, i.e., evaporate quickly at room temperature, such manufacturing processes merely add to the complexity of capturing all the flavor components in a given flavor oil. Certain flavor components and flavor oils are so highly volatile that they are very difficult to handle and give off intense odors. The loss of certain flavor components, i.e., the more volatile compounds in the flavor oil, results in a flavor perception which is otherwise altered from its intended taste and aroma characteristics. Thus, to capture the true characteristics of a particular flavor oil, it is necessary to substantially minimize or effectively eliminate the loss of these components.
Simple mixing procedures have proved to be ineffective in maintaining all the flavor components in the mixture. Additionally, spray drying procedures have proved impractical because very little flavor was retained in the dried product. This is due in part to the heat and air exposure involved in the process. Furthermore, conventional spray drying or spray congealing processes require the feed material to sit for relatively long periods, i.e. hours, in the liquid state while they are waiting to be pumped into the feedlines and subsequently sprayed. This waiting period creates a heat history which is deleterious to heat sensitive materials which may be present in the feed material, e.g. volatile flavor oils, heat sensitive sweeteners and pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, the conventional processes require dispersing agents to keep components in the molten mixture from settling out prior to and during pumping to the nozzle. More recently, however, it has been discovered that flavor oils can be flash flow processed using flash heat or flash shear methods. Flash flow processing is described in U.S. Ser. No. 08/205,026, filed Mar. 2, 1994; U.S. Ser. No. 08/081,338, filed Jun. 29, 1993; and U.S. Ser. No. 07/847,595, filed Mar. 5, 1992, commonly assigned to Fuisz Technologies, Inc., describes a method of providing a micronized oleaginous droplet in a saccharide-based matrix. Although flash flow processing has been found to be extremely effective in capturing the majority of flavor components during processing and protecting these components in the resultant matrices formed by the process, there is still a need to improve methods which prevent those especially high volatile components of the flavor oil from being lost.
It is apparent that there is a need for a method of handling and processing extremely volatile flavor oils and flavor components, as well as a product which maintains and delivers these materials without flavor loss.